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Monday, 20 January 2014

International Tabletop Day

Last year on March 30th the first International Tabletop Day was held and in the UK it was all a bit of a rush. This was no fault of the team behind Tabletop, more a victim of it's success than anything else.

For 2014 they've managed it much better and have given roughly 10 weeks notice of the event which should give flgs', clubs and other groups time to organise their events. In 2014 the event is on Saturday 5th April.

So why is this important?

As I mentioned in more recent posts the media coverage of the hobby is patchy at best. What Tabletop Day gives the hobby is an opportunity to celebrate across the formats with the community at large and do it in a way that gets quality media coverage thanks to the celebrity aspect of Tabletop.

So what? I've heard a number of people (mostly on Twitter) say that this is nothing more than another excuse for the same groups of people to get together and play the same games they always play. Whilst I sort of understand that, stress the sort of, if that's the limit of their understanding of what the event can be about then I think they're missing the point.

This is a celebration of the hobby and one which has greater potential than D&D Game Day, Magic Celebration or indeed Free RPG Day. Each of these are great celebrations of the games and formats they represent but they're limited to those games and a single format so do not have as great a potential to grow the community as Tabletop Day does.

So what makes it so different?

It's a celebration of the hobby as a whole. Sure, the show largely focusses on board and card games but a big part of reasoning behind that is that the games being played have to work in a TV format. Wil's touched on this on one of his Not The Flog postings where he highlights his reasons for not choosing specific tabletop games and indeed formats.

The event itself though is not limited in the same way that the show is. Any tabletop game can and should be played to celebrate the hobby in this way. Whether that be board and card games, roleplaying games, collectable card games or even war games. Each format should be equally represented.

What I will say though is that Tabletop Day should be seen as an opportunity to try something different, something you wouldn't normally play or indeed something you haven't played for a very long time.

Me? I'll be helping run an event to celebrate Tabletop Day at my games club. What we''ll be doing is still to be confirmed but at the very least it will be board and card games. I wouldn't be surprised though if it ends up being much more than that.